


Shrine Of Your Lies

by lokilickedme



Series: Taliesin [2]
Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician), Celtic Mythology, Hozier - Fandom, Take Me To Church - Hozier (Song)
Genre: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (AU), Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Deities, F/M, Found Love, Irish Fairytale/Real World crossover, Irish Lore, Longing, Lost Love, Mild Language, Reincarnation, Separation, Sex, Song: Take Me To Church (Hozier), Soul Bond, Soul Sex, Soulmates, ghost story, legend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: Part 2 of the TALIESIN seriesTaliesin, the Celtic deity of song and his lover Lealieh have been reborn again - this time without their memories of who they are. Living apart as mortals in the world of the humans - he a musician, her a traveler - each of them realizes something is missing...until a chance meeting in a deconsecrated church in Ireland brings their souls together briefly.Recognizing one another but having no memory of their past lives together, their mortal bodies return again to their separate paths through life, apart but longing for a togetherness they can sense but not understand.Will they find each other again?Based on lyrics from the song TAKE ME TO CHURCH by Hozier





	1. An Aisling...The Dream

 

   

 

We're gods and monsters, all of us.

 

The world is a playground, both roaming free - the gods and the monsters both, together, at most peaceful and at least tolerant - under the watchful eyes of the creaky swings and rusted see-saws, whispering to avoid eavesdropping by the sensitive ears of the wobbly merry-go-round, skipping lightly to avoid disturbing the slumber of the litter strewn sandbox.  Children play here under the guise of mortal beings, simply going about their lives, separating themselves into categories.

Gods to the slides, monsters to the jungle gym.

Watched over, but not supervised.

The angels have abandoned Heaven to walk among us, leaving the skies to an amorphous collection of mists and puffy clouds where storms dance in an elemental street fight that never ends, simply moving from neighborhood to neighborhood starting arguments.  Hell is nothing but an amalgamation of shadows, minding their own business.

And under the lies and made-up stories of who and what we are, the truth simmers just below the surface, not quite hot enough to boil but not cool enough to swallow without pain.  We are souls with no place to go, and so we stay where we've been banished.

Wandering, searching, finding, losing.  Being found again.

Being lost again.

Always, always, _searching_.

 

This is a story about love.  Not forbidden, not doomed, not starcrossed or ill fated.

Just...love.

Because love never dies, even when the vessels that carry it do.

 

_If I'm a pagan of the good times_    
_My lover's the sunlight_    
_To keep the Goddess on my side_    
_She demands a sacrifice_   

 

**The Playground:  empty**    
**Heaven:  raging  
****Hell:  indifferent**

 

Nothing had ever come close to this.  Not remotely.  Not ever.

_This._

This  _feeling_.

It was a pain, almost...the bite of leather indenting a pale wrist, the sharp sting of pepper on a bitten lip.  It filled her, unbearable, agonizing, overflowing endlessly, caressing and keening and softly humming an unhearable tune that thrummed through her.  His body over hers a shocking contrast to the intangible.  Long and lithe, all hard sinew and unflinching bone and skin, _soft skin,_ the only roughness of its touch against hers held in the dark hair scattered across his chest, his lower belly.  Teasing, tantalizing, finally bringing a rawness that heightened the pleasure that was eating her alive while that sound that carried no noise hovered above them.

And then her soul left her body with a breathless scream, and in the final moments of a handful of frantic thrusts, his followed.

What was left was quivering, trembling, desperate for air and pounding mercilessly with blood rushing through hearts that beat too hard and gasps rising to the vaulted ceiling to escape what had happened here.

This travesty.  This forbidden thing.

This sin.

 

His breath on her cheek, warm and quick.  Hands stilling her, squeezing gently, soothing.  When his body left hers she sobbed at the cold chill of the air between them.  The hum was silent.

It wasn't fair.

But the world seldom was.

Their souls were somewhere else, together, leaving them empty, filled only with the strangled gasps of lungs trying desperately to refill with breath to keep their mortal shells alive...their moans, free of their bodies and loosed to eternity, clung to the damp walls; their strangled cries struggled together to be heard by ears that no longer accepted them, finally silent but forever entwined as they faded to nothing.

Their bodies should be the same.  Blissful nothingness, not this heavy struggling collection of flesh and electrical impulse, eternally jealous of the unfettered freedom offered only to that other part of themselves.  That fleeting, frantic bit of themselves that had been shyly introduced, brazenly shared and then joyously released.  What was left now was simply flesh, heated but cooling, flushed but paling, quivering yet stilling.

He looked down at her as he tucked himself into his pants, hiking them up over too-narrow hips that had kissed her own.  He didn't say anything.

Or maybe he did?

The blood was still rushing in her ears.  Words meant nothing...she couldn't hear them anyway.

All she heard was heaven, raging above them.

 

 

_Ar Lean...Continued..._

 

 

 


	2. An Díspeagadh - The Disquieting

   

 

 

_Offer me that deathless death..._

 

**The Playground:  oblivious**

**Heaven:  conspiring**

**Hell:  maliciously grinning**

 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

Earth green.  His eyes, when he raised them to look at her.  Dark and dusty in the dim cathedral, stained glass left untended by a caretaker long absent.  They surprised her, those eyes.  Caring, intimate, curious.  Neglected.  The first eyes that she'd ever felt touching her rather than dancing casually over her.  A touch that warmed her.

"I heard you come in."

She doubted it.  He had continued playing, his body moving with the words that came from his mouth to dance longingly alongside the tender sound his fingers coaxed from the old guitar on his lap.  If he knew she was there he hadn't shown it.

A gasp had whispered from her throat when he stood.  He was tall, his long legs unfolding from their perch on the stool as he lowered the battered instrument to the floor and turned to her.  A smile, crooked and shy, curled his lips.  There was nothing lascivious in the way his eyes took hers or in the way his look urged her to feel comfort in his presence.  But there was no comfort in his own, and their eyes let go of each other as quickly as they met.

The girl felt sad.  It wasn't her own sadness that sat hard on her heart, though...it was  _his._

"It was beautiful...your song."

His eyes came back to hers.  The absence of a bruising gaze sent a shiver through her.  Not once had a man looked at her without a stare that started elsewhere than her eyes, that didn't first pummel her body with heavy appraisal or darkly joyous perusal before finding her face.  An unsettling guilt pushed the air from her lungs when she realized she hadn't done the same for him.

"Thank you."

 

 

_Ar Lean...Continued..._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Nochtann sé an Spéir Chun an Fhírinne a Dhúnadh - Unveil the Sky For It Shrouds Our Truth

 

 

_Good god let me give you my life -_

 

**The Playground:  disinterested**

**Heaven:  weeping**

**Hell:  chuckling quietly**

 

The rain, cold and bitter, kept falling outside.

 

Breathless, thirsting, frantic...hands pulling at clothes that tauntingly refused to give way easily, lungs heaving to keep up with hearts that raced to push blood where it was needed, bodies straining and pushing and desperate for touch.  The solid bench under her back was hard and unyielding but his hands took away the discomfort, made her forget the dull ache against her spine, moving over her with an urgent tenderness and calloused fingers that ghosted over skin like a wraith.  Cold air bit her skin when her shirt finally gave way to his determination to see her.

But his eyes only caressed her for a moment before his mouth took their place in worship of her flesh.  She didn't know what he said against her skin, what murmured prayers fell in whispers from his lips, only that the shape they took on her body felt so holy and profane that her thighs trembled as he settled between them.  And then, even then, as he pushed into her to lay claim to what had only become his once she'd opened herself to him, he was as gentle with her physical self as a hushed whisper caressing a lover's throat.

No words fell between them.

No harsh groan, no panting breath, no broken curse.

Just rain against the ancient tiled roof, wind through the crescented eaves, thunder in the nonexistent distance.  His body rose against hers and in that brief moment of raw silken ecstasy she saw his true form.

He opened his eyes, and saw hers.

Neither of them were afraid, though perhaps they should have been.  For once souls are seen by one another, they cannot be unseen.

The recognition between their second selves went unnoticed, for the sweet keening pain of that thrilling shrill moment of death and resurrection overtook them, and the whole of the universe and this cold unholy place that cradled their bodies saw to it that they remained too distracted to see it happen.

The sadness of it would have been tragically overwhelming, had their eyes stayed open long enough.

 

 

 

**_ar lean...continued..._ **

**Author's Note:**

> For Alana again, for reasons
> 
> Lyrics from Take Me To Church property of Andrew Hozier-Byrne


End file.
